There are two very different types of views that stand in opposition to the notion of ethics as a subject matter alongside others. In both, ethics is ubiquitous; but this shows that saying that ethics is everywhere can be equivocal. Also, according to both views, ethics is transcendental; once more, the term here signifies two very different things.

The first type of view involves an idea of ethics as permeating everything we do. It is not a separable domain engulfing only some of what we do. According to this view, there is ethical responsiveness already present, embedded, in everything we say and think. The ethical is a kind of condition for thinking about things in the first place—a condition for making contact with them with our mind, in judgment and in action. This is the sense in which it is transcendental, on this view. Simply put, making intellectual contact with things—trying to understand them, talking about them, describing them, and so on—requires taking an interest; it is taking an interest. If we philosophically try to give an account for describing, thinking, questioning, trying to understand, judging, manipulating and so on, if we try to adopt a point of view “from within” and characterize these activities—their reality, their point—then part of what we’ll have to say is that these are all forms of taking interest in things, engaging with them. But now, taking an interest means caring; it means finding things important, or worthwhile engaging with, or interesting, or noteworthy, and so on. And this means that for us there is value everywhere in our everyday commerce with things—in judging, describing, trying to understand, manipulating, and in general making contact with things with our body and mind. Our forms of intellectual and practical engagement with things are at the same time forms of evaluating them. This is true, according to this first kind of view, whatever this value is and however mundane it may look or be. If ethics is the study of what we care about, then according to this first view, to study what we care about simply means tracing the cobwebs of forms that our contact with things takes. The whole of ethics, we can trust, the whole of ways we care about things, engage with them, is caught up in this cobweb—and not by accident. This is, after all, what this cobweb is for.

In the second kind of view, ethics has absolutely no room in the normal everyday commerce with things. If anything, ethics is a global attitude towards this commerce, coming as if from a place outside it. In this sense, in this second view, ethics is transcendental. There are different forms that the ethical attitude might take—chiefly, deep dissatisfaction and deep being-at-home-ness. These are, in Tractarian terms, the attitudes of the unhappy and the happy correspondingly. But in both cases, ethics is not a certain domain in the commerce with things—not a separable subject matter; it is rather a reaction to this commerce. Also, it is not a reaction to some of it—to some language games, to some forms of judgment, or to some practical and intellectual forms of contact with the world. It is rather global. The dissatisfaction of the unhappy is not with this or with that fact, or with this or that form of interest in things. It is dissatisfaction with the very normalcy, the very everydayness of this interest. It typically comes with a wish for something else, something higher—for a new sense of reality, or for a revelation of the true essence of things, which the unhappy expects will once and for all uncover what she feels as a deep falsehood and illusion that is everywhere, and which cannot be penetrated by the ordinary forms of commerce. In opposition, the being-at-home-ness of the happy is equally global. It is not a being-at-home-ness in this or that practice, this or that fact, this or that culture. It typically involves recognition of one’s own finitude, and an acceptance of it, perhaps in the form of willingness to find oneself again in the yet unknown: a willingness to learn, to practice, to feel, to do, to experiment, to change.

It is easy to confuse the attitude of the happy with the first philosophical view of ethics I mentioned above. It is easy to think of the “view from within,” endorsed by proponents of the first philosophical view as a kind of attitude towards language. But this is confused: The first philosophical view does not imply happiness; it does not imply acceptance (or conservatism). The first philosophical view is not—not even meant to be—a global attitude toward our practices, and the fact that ethics, as understood along the lines of this view, permeates language as a whole does not make it an attitude towards language. The first view rather draws attention to the reality of our practices—to their point as expressions of all sorts of care and interests—by formulating a transcendental condition for those practices: It draws attention to something that is embedded in those practices, and it matters not what our attitude is towards this fact—whether we like it or not, happy with it or not. Happiness, in opposition, is an attitude towards language, an attitude towards life, and the whole of human practice. It is a global attitude towards the cobweb of forms which our contact with the world takes. In this way it is like unhappiness; in fact it is its opposite. Both happiness and unhappiness view language and world “from side-ways on.”

The confusion between the two views of ethics can also happen in the other direction: happiness and unhappiness—qua attitudes towards the totality of life—may be thought of as particular practices or kinds of practices, particular language games or particular colors that practices can take or styles in which language game can be conducted, or as one more distinction that captures a difference of responsiveness to things, and at any rate as something that is already weaved into, and can only be seen from within our life with things. This falsifies things. The attitudes of happiness and unhappiness are not weaved into our life with things, and are invisible by any inspection of our practices. Morality, in the second kind of view, is otherworldly. From the point of view of our practices, the attitudes of the happy and the unhappy look like a big and deep confusion. They involve a “failure” to do anything in particular, to take part in any particular activity, to take any particular sort of interest in things. Even using the word ‘attitude’ to capture what happiness and unhappiness are seems wrong. For normally ‘taking an attitude towards something’ denotes some sort of activity. For similar reasons no word would fit. And appreciating this is appreciating something essential about what ethics, according to the second kind of view, is, and why it is no subject matter.

I don't think I understand the second kind of view. Unhappiness sounds similar to boredom, but I don't think you mean that this is what it is. Is it at all related? If so, how? Happiness is more obscure to me. A deep being-at-homeness sounds good, but I'm not sure what it is. It also doesn't sound <i>all that good</i> if it's at all close to complacency. Can you say more about what you have in mind? Are there examples, real or fictional, that you are thinking of?

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Reshef

6/4/2012 07:08:06 am

Thanks Duncan.

The original idea for the post came to me while reading something in Alice Crary’s book. The view of ethics that she is presenting there seemed to me deeply Wittgensteinian. No surprise there. At the same time, however, it seems to me very different from the kind of view Wittgenstein is putting forward in the TLP or the Ethics Lecture. I think she would disagree. It seems to me that there is here a contrast between two views—two Wittgensteinian views. Perhaps we can call them the one-world view and the two-worlds view. These are two views that were held by Wittgenstein, but not at different times. I tend to think he held on to throughout his life.

You ask if boredom is an example for unhappiness. I think it’s a good example to think about, but it is a bit tricky, because I think boredom might be, but is not necessarily, an example for unhappiness. Ruth Kluger says that boredom means that you want to escape from time itself. Taken this way, I think, this is an expression of unhappiness. The expression of this attitude—this boredom—forces on Kluger a kind of nonsensical expression; and I think of this as a mark of the second kind of view in general, and unhappiness in particular. But, once more, I don’t think that all boredom must be like this. So, perhaps, we should make a distinction between two kinds of boredom: boredom that is an attitude to life or to time in general, and boredom that is a condition in life—a mood.

Something similar to what I said about unhappiness can be said with regard to happiness. The best example I can think of is something that St. Paul says. He says that to the Gentiles Christ crucified is foolishness. I think he means ‘nonsense’—not just that it is unwise, but that Christ crucified really doesn’t make ANY sense. Similarly, In the Gorgias, Callicles tells Socrates at one point that if what he is saying is true, then the world has turned up side down. Another example may be something I read in Geach the other day. He says that one’s religious beliefs actually make a difference to what you think will happen. He says this in the context of discussing tough situations, like the dilemma where one has to decide whether to lie in order to save an innocent life. It seems that he felt, in some sense, that his religious belief protects him. I’m not sure Geach is the best example. Typically, he is an Aristotelian, and as such a proponent of a one-world view. But possibly a different kind of attitude comes out of him in this moment I have in mind—an attitude that is reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s talk of absolute safety in the Lecture. I take this absolute safety too to be an expression of happiness in the Tractarian sense.

Let me point out that I think that there is a kind of didactical danger here in looking for examples. If I’m right about boredom, then things that go under the same name, and apparently resemble each other, can be an expression of two very different views. The examples might therefore confuse, or obscure important differences.

And this is connected to another general point about the relation of proponents of the first kind of view towards the second. Proponents of the first kind of view—partly, because the view is so rich and wide—will have a tendency to want to accommodate the second kind of view in theirs. And one thing that might make this seem possible is the fact that the same word (boredom, safety…) can be part of the expression both of a view of the first kind, or of the second. But this would be to confuse surface grammar with depth grammar. And this is I guess my main point: I don’t think it is possible to accommodate the second view in the first. The ability to see the second kind of view depends on allowing a kind of room for it, which proponents of the first kind of view would normally be reluctant to allow. Normally, proponents of the first kind of view will think the second is deeply confused. A foolishness. And the thing is that they are not completely wrong about this: the second kind of view DOES essentially involve a kind of nonsense, and a willingness to be implicated in nonsense.

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Duncan Richter

6/4/2012 10:17:35 pm

Thanks, Reshef.

This helps, although I guess I shouldn't expect to understand the second kind of view, given what you say. The first kind of view seems more particular in a way: ethics is involved in each thing. While the second view seems more global: ethics is involved in everything, taken as a whole. Perhaps the difference lies in this idea of there being a whole, such a thing as the world. It's hard to think of the world as a thing, rather than as the totality of things, or something like that. But if there are two worlds--the world of the happy and of the unhappy, or the world of the gentiles and the world of the faithful, say--then perhaps the idea makes more sense. I don't know.

Is there something Heideggerian in this? Or some thing that Heidegger's work might help with somehow? It reminds me of him a little, but that might be because of just one or two superficial similarities (to do with boredom, for instance).

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reshef

6/6/2012 05:23:48 am

Thanks Duncan form pressing me on this,

I’m not sure we should say that we should not expect to understand the second kind of view. There is a sense in which it has to be true as you say, given that it treads in nonsense; but I have a sense that it may nevertheless be misleading to say that, because it is, in a way, a form of responsiveness to life—a human form of responsiveness—and as such it can be understood. Of course, the understanding here is of a different sort, and clarifying this, I take it, is connected to things we are doing in your blog. But in any case—and I know that this is part of why this whole thing is a bit frustrating—any description of this view must, I think, come from recognition of the phenomenon that is not merely intellectual: recognition that there really is such kind of responsiveness, and from one’s ability to see it, or to have a feel for it. In this, this kind of view is not different from other modes of responsiveness to life. It is virtually impossible to make sense of any of them, without having a sense of their reality—their particularity and detail. But I guess you are right to indicate that the difficulty with the second kind of view is greater: that it requires something more of us in order to recognize that there is a phenomenon here in the first place, and that this is something that may not make sense to all.

I think you are right about proponents of the second kind of view treating the totality of things as a “thing,” a whole, which they are viewing sub specie aeternitatis. Thanks for pointing that out. If you allow me to qualify this point a bit, though: I think it is not part of the view that this “thing,” the totality of things, is grammatically exactly like an ordinary object. The person who holds the second kind of view, trying to give it expression, is forced to speak in ways that strictly speaking are nonsensical. I would add that they are not just forced to talk that way; they are typically also forced to have this kind of view in the first place. This is not the kind of view one chooses after some consideration of the alternatives. Again, if we are to talk here about “choosing,” it would have to be very different.

Let me clarify something. When I suggested calling the second kind of view ‘a two-world view’ I did not have in mind the world of the happy and that of the unhappy as the two worlds. Each of those—happiness and unhappiness—is a two world view in itself. The contrast, in each case, is between (1) the mundane world: the world of “facts, facts and facts, but no ethics,” and (2) the world of ethics, the world of value that has value. The happy and unhappy are just two examples for such attitudes. I haven’t given it enough thought, but I don’t see why it should be impossible for there to be more attitudes. In any case, I can say the following with some certainty: there are different kinds of attitudes that I would call happy—the Pauline is only one of them, and I don’t think it is necessary to be religious to be happy in this sense. Similarly, there are different kinds of attitudes I would call unhappy—boredom is one, but there are others. In a way, the different vices (sloth, envy, gluttony, pride…) may capture—if they indeed express such attitudes—forms of unhappiness.

I don’t know enough, and haven’t thought enough about what I do know, about Heidegger to say whether there is something Heideggerian in this second kind of view. My overall sense of Heidegger is that much of what he says is useful in describing the first kind of view. Perhaps there are things he says that can help capture the reality of the second kind of view, I'm not sure. Did you have something that he says in mind in particular?

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Duncan Richter

6/9/2012 06:29:42 pm

I'll try to reply more fully when I have more time, but I want to just thank you for this. On Heidegger, no, I didn't have anything in particular in mind. I haven't read any of his work for some time, and I've never felt that I really understood him properly. But you said enough to trigger a Heidegger response in my mind. There's probably no real connection at all.

"The attitudes of happiness and unhappiness are not weaved into our life with things, and are invisible by any inspection of our practices."

At first, this struck me as implausible. Then I thought of Malcolm's report of Wittgenstein's deathbed request to the people he was staying with to tell his friends that he'd had a wonderful life, and the way in which Malcolm found this curious (in his memoir about W). If I recall correctly, Malcolm's surprise at this comment (or perhaps I am thinking about someone else's discussion of the story, maybe Daniel Nettle's in his little book on Happiness) was that it certainly would not seem to someone on the outside that this makes sense for W to say, as it seems to express a "happiness" that seems incongruous with both his sickness at the time and his often serious and hard manner.

So, if I have this right, your point is that there are two different things that "ethics" can transcend: (a) other domains of life (or, as it were, other disciplines) and (b) the world regarded as a totality of facts. I think I can see how those are separate. But then is the larger point that these are not exactly *competing* views, but rather two views about ethics that get conflated, for example, by those who go in for some combination of naturalism (contra the second kind of transcendence) and the idea that only some issues are *moral* issues (while other issues are merely matters of something like etiquette on the one hand and prudence on the other) (contra the first kind)?

Along these lines, in your first response to Duncan did you mean to say that you think that W held onto both of these views about the transcendence of ethics? That would seem to make sense. But I think like Duncan I'm not sure I get the second kind of view, entirely. Or at least, it's not clear to me what "doing" ethics means from that view. It seems like an orientation toward the world as a whole. The first kind of ethics is an orientation to what-we-are-doing-when-we-are-doing-ethics. And so I agree that one could have the transcendent view about that without being happy or unhappy in the sense above. But that general orientation, it seems, might influence how one looks at particular practices. And to go back to my first point, perhaps that is why I'm not entirely sure that happiness or unhappiness would be--entirely--"invisible." (Though I can see why it might be tempting to think so. But could that be a sort of beetle in the box?)

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reshef

6/7/2012 05:51:50 am

Thanks Matt.

Thanks for the example—Wittgenstein on his deathbed. It strikes me as right, namely, as an example of happiness—or at least an attempted expression of happiness, perhaps with the desire to be happy. For from all I know about Wittgenstein, I don’t tend to think he was a happy person. The example strikes me as an attempt to adopt a point of view with regard to life as a whole, and in this sense an example of the second kind of view.
I feel, however, that it is always somewhat risky to discuss examples in this context. For even though sometimes the intuitions are stronger, it is often the case that when some words, or actions, or thoughts or manners, are an expression to the second sort of view, they can still be rather interpreted as giving expression to a view of the first kind. In the Wittgenstein-on-deathbed example, Wittgenstein’s words can be taken as a kind of summary of his achievements and losses, perhaps. As such, it seems to me, they do not give expression to a view of the second kind.

I’m not sure I would make the point I was trying to make about transcendence by saying that ethics can transcend two things. I don’t necessarily think it is wrong. However, I think it could be misleading, because it may make it seem as if the transcendence is the same in both cases. The way I was thinking about it was that the verb “transcend” means something different in the two cases. So, in connection with the first kind of view, I took transcendence to be of a Kantian sort: the kind of thing that transcendental conditions have. A mind is a transcendental condition for pain, for instance. A mind does not transcend pain in the sense that it is different from it, or surpasses it in some way, but it is something that makes pain (logically) possible, and in this sense transcendent to it. I suggest that ethics in the first sense—the taking of interest in things in some way or another—is in a similar way a transcendental condition for practices in general. In every practice action and thought you can see the reflection of an interest: something that guides and motivates the practice the action or the thought. Otherwise, you would just not have a practice or action or thought; without the interest, there would be no reason to have a practice or action or thought. As opposed to that, I was thinking about the transcendence of the second kind as a kind of reaction to something—in this case a reaction to the totality of facts, or to life as a whole. The actions or words that express this kind of attitude can be a gesture of separation from all the facts, or alternatively a gesture of immersion in the totality facts. But in any case, the words or actions are not taken to be in line with other facts, to be more facts. It is as if they come from a place outside the totality.

I’m not sure how to connect this to the view you mentioned that conflates naturalism and the idea that only some issues are moral. I need your help seeing the connection.

You are right to press me on how happiness or unhappiness (and in general, an attitude of the second kind) would show in someone’s life. My claim is not that it wouldn’t show, or be invisible period. I only claim that it would be invisible by any inspection of our practices. I take it not to be visible from there, because this attitude it is not part of those practices—not one of the threads in the fabric of our life with things. I agree: It is a kind of beetle in the box. It is not part of the mechanism, and therefore its operation does not show in the functioning of the mechanism. But I don’t think this means that it doesn’t show. Here it gets frustrating—especially, when trying to make it visible to the kind of Wittgensteinian who has internalized the insight about the depth of the confusion of looking at things from ‘sideways-on.’ The only way to see this kind of attitude is for it to be forced on you in some way: for instance, when you want to describe someone’s actions, or thoughts, or mood, or whatever, and you can only come up with things that don’t make sense like: “His words are a testimony of a dissatisfaction with language itself” or “it was as if there was an invisible hand guiding my actions, and yet they were more than ever mine.” Not everyone would be able to see this kind of attitude, I guess, because not everyone will want to say things like that. The main thing is that some people do sometimes, and I don’t think that their talking nonsense in such cases means they are confused.

After saying all this, I can’t really ask if it makes sense to you. So I’ll ask: does that strike a chord? Do you think I’m being led to this distinction because of failure to see something—that I’m tempted by something that by now I should have learned not to be tempted by?

Looking back over your original remarks, let me try again to see if I'm hearing the "chord." It seems to me that what you mean when you discuss the second way in which ethics is transcendental is a matter of one's "outlook," or as you say, one's global attitude. And that outlook--be it happiness or unhappiness, or (could we say?) optimism or pessimism--colors everything else. (That has the Kantian kind of transcendental thrust, I take it.) If that's roughly in sum what you mean, then I think I get better now how that is (obviously) different from thinking that ethics is transcendental in that it "permeates everything we do."

Perhaps what it puzzling about the second kind of transcendence is that, if this is true, then it becomes unclear how we "discuss" ethics--and perhaps this is what W is struggling with, for example, in the Lecture on Ethics. And why FP Ramsey claimed that there is "nothing to discuss" concerning ethical matters. I, personally, want to resist that; perhaps because, as Midgley once said, there is only one world and we all have to live in it...

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reshef

6/9/2012 12:27:58 am

Thanks Matt.

The difference between the ways you and I describe the second view may just be a matter of different choices of words. I’m not sure. In particular, I’m not sure I see what you see when you distinguish between an attitude of optimism or pessimism coloring everything we do, and ethics permeating everything we do. An attitude that colors everything else, as far as I see, may still not be a reaction to everything from the outside. It may not have in view the totality of facts and life. It may still be part of the routine. Did you mean something different?

In any case, ethics in the second kind of view is anything but routine. It sometimes goes with revelation, and with a sense that life has to stop for ethics to show—for ethics to pierce the mundane, and force itself on it. Ethics, in the second view is intrusive. It interrupts life, not part of it. It is connected with a certain sort of experiences—experiences that point beyond the everyday, away from it. It does not involve a denial of all the forms of responsiveness to life that characterize our everyday life with things, or a rejection of those forms. It is just not one of them. Simone Weil has something like this, I think, in mind when she talks about an attitude of waiting. And this is also, I take it, the source of the worry that some ultra-orthodox anti-Zionist Jews have that Zionism is impious, and treats real value as if it can be forced into the everyday. And the attitude does not have to be religious (unless this is how you define “religious”). For not all religious views share this kind of view of ethics, and there are some non-religious views of morality that are of the second kind. I have in mind Kant’s view in particular, and his talk of the Moral Law as shining from above, remote, like a jewel.

Another difference between the ways you and I describe the matter is that you associate the Kantian sense of ‘transcendental’ with the second view, and for me it is associated with the first. I take Kant’s idea of the transcendental to denote something that is already part of the phenomena. What is transcendental is in a way behind the phenomena, makes it possible; but it is not beyond it. Now, things may be a bit more complicated, because as I mentioned above I think that Kant held a view of ethics of the second kind. (I’m not a Kant scholar, but my sense is that many people, including Korsgaard and Engstrom for instance, are ascribing to Kant a view that I would consider of the first kind.) In any case, perhaps this is what you also had in mind when you associated the Kantian transcendental with the second kind of view.

Lastly, with regard to your Midgley quotation. I described the second kind of view as a two-world view. I’m following Dorothea Krook, and I also have in mind Plato’s distinction between the world of being and the world of becoming. The point is that the metaphor here of two worlds can apparently be useful to some; it captures their intentions. But I’m not sure it could be helpful to all. One thing that may diminish the usefulness of this metaphor is that even one-world views of ethics can sometimes make use of the idea of radically different perspectives. So, for instance, Iris Murdoch gives expression to a one-world view, I think, when she says: “We differ not only because we select different objects out of the same world but because we see different worlds.”

I must admit, that more than with other topics, I tremble each time I say something about this—as if I’m not only bound to be misunderstood, but also as if, and because, I’m bound to misdescribe things. That is, as if I'm bound to misunderstand myself.

We may just be using different words. I'm not sure that what I said about "outlook" helps; but what I wanted to suggest is that an "outlook" could have that kind of non-everyday, interruptive quality, and have a global quality in the sense that it is a reaction to the world as a whole. (Of course, optimism/pessimism might be used to describe psychological dispositions or moods, but that would be something different.)

I certainly grasp the idea of these experiences that seem to be global reactions, and so not part of the flow of responsiveness to the everyday business of life. W's example of wondering at the existence of the whole world has always resonated with me--that is, I think I've had experiences like that. And perhaps one reason that these experiences seem to be of a different order is that it's hard to know how, exactly, one is to "go on" in the wake of such an experience. Which is to say it's not clear what it has to do with the everyday. (And I take it that was part of your original point.)

I'm struggling a bit, I think, to grasp how we talk about ethics at this level. Or what "doing" ethics, or having a conversation about ethics--about our respective orientations--at this level, would be. What do you think? Is this the "ethics" that we can't exactly talk about? Is that why it is evasive? (I suspect that this is related to what I was working on in my Inquiry paper on W, "Speaking for Oneself"...)

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reshef

6/13/2012 08:23:13 am

Part I

Thanks for pressing me on this, Matt.

What you said made me think about much. Let me begin with your question about the possibility of conversation and discussions in ethics as it is understood on the second view, and see if I have anything valuable to say. I think there might be something to the claim that it can be, sometimes, impossible to have discussions on this level. One thing I have in mind here is the kind of reaction you would probably have if someone suggested that you ate your kids, or something like that. Some things are just beyond discussion, and appreciating that about them, I take it, can be part of appreciating a particular moral view—possibly a view of the second kind.

However, let me hasten to say that I think I am in agreement with you in saying that it should not be absolutely impossible, at least not always, to have discussions on this level—discussions between people who hold different attitudes, say the happy and the unhappy. However, these discussions will have a different shape—a different “grammar” (?)—than discussions in, say, science. Now, the comparison with science is important, but relatively easy. I feel I need more distinctions. In particular, I feel I need distinctions between the discussion between the happy and unhappy and other types of discussion in ethics. And this, for me, is the more important point, so let me say something about this.

There is a kind of disagreements in ethics that are based on a shared view of the facts. Let me call it ‘the first kind of disagreement.’ So, for instance, there may be a dispute about whether it would be good to raise taxes on the rich or not. The facts of the matter may be in dispute; that is, people may disagree about the likely outcome of taxing the rich. But what is not in dispute is that the decision should be based on facts that everyone could in principle agree about. Large part of the moral disagreements in such cases is due to a disagreement about the facts. (And let me just say, to prevent misunderstanding, that in real life disagreements can be of more than one kind at the same time. People are not always logically clear what they are arguing about, and sometimes different arguments run into each other. So in real life, it is not un likely in such cases to for there be more than just a disagreement about the facts.)

There is another kind of disagreement, which is not very different from the previous one, where people are in agreement about the facts, but nevertheless make different value judgments. I tend to think of this as belonging to the same general category as the first kind of disagreement, mainly because both disagreements involve a separation between the factual judgment and the value judgment. Moral disagreements here look very much like disagreements about taste, where we agree on the color of the dress and the color of the shoes (the facts), and yet you think that the shoes go with the dress and I don’t.

Now, there is a second kind of disagreement in ethics, which involves a more radical difference between views, and which does not assume a separation between the factual judgment and the value judgment. Disagreements like this not only involve a disagreement about the facts, but also a disagreement about the proper way to conceptualize the facts. So, for instance, disagreements between those who support gay marriage and those who don’t are often disagreements about concepts (even though they are not always recognized as such). This is indicated by the fact that some conservatives think that using the word “marriage” is just silly in this context. For them, it would be nonsense to call two women ‘married,’ as it would be nonsense to say that I could be married to the peach tree in my yard. Liberals often view things differently: that is, when they look at a gay couple with a child, they don’t see anything that they take to be conceptually different from a woman a man and a child; they see a family, and a marriage. The difference for them between gay marriage and heterosexual marriage is not greater than the difference between inter-racial marriage and intra-racial marriage. (I think that this is the sense in which Murdoch says that we may live in different worlds, and she also thought that we have a kind of personal responsibility for the world we live in.)

(I should own the fact that I have been talking about “conceptualization” without explaining the term. People sometimes flinch when I use this term, so I apparently need to do more work—if I can—to clarify it. But not now.)

I discuss the difference between the happy and the unhappy in the next part.

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reshef

6/13/2012 08:25:16 am

Part II

In any case, my view is that the difference between the happy and the unhappy is not like the disagreements I described in the first part. The disagreement between them is neither of the first, nor of the second kind. It is not a disagreement about the facts, and it is also not a difference between ways of conceptualizing things. Talk about difference of “views” here also seems to me wrong. Happiness and unhappiness are not different views. I have so far used the word “attitude” to describe the difference between the happy and unhappy, so I might stick to that.

Now, about the possibility of discussion. My sense is that to see what kind of discussions are possible between the happy and the unhappy, it is useful to put them alongside discussions between people who are involved in a disagreement of the second kind: discussions between people who see different facts, who conceptualize differently. I tend to think of such differences as differences between people who see different aspects: where one person sees a rabbit, the other sees a duck; where one person sees a marriage, the other sees mere sexual relationships; where one sees a baby, another sees an embryo; where one sees lunch, another sees a butchered animal, where one sees a criminal, another sees a crazy person or a lost soul…). Discussions between people who disagree in this way take the form of attempting to reveal aspects: to oneself, and to others.

In general, where the difference between people is a difference in how they conceptualize things, discussions between people who conceptualize differently are, naturally, discussions whose point is conceptualization. If the discussion is open-minded (a big IF), the different sides of the debate try to help each other to see the point of conceptualizing something in a particular way, and thereby allow them to test that conceptualization for themselves—see how it feels—and possibly be convinced.

Now, since the difference between the happy and the unhappy, as I understand it, is not difference between ways of conceptualization, the point of the discussion between the happy and the unhappy will not be the discovery of the right, or proper, or whatever, way to conceptualize things. Nevertheless, there is a kind of similarity between the discussions, since in both cases the discussion does not move on stable conceptual ground, as it were: in the one case because the question about the concepts is open, and in the other case because concepts are not the issue in the first place.

An example of this kind of discussion, perhaps, can be found in Ecclesiastes, which can be read—at least partly—as an attempt to think seriously about the proper moral attitude to life as a whole. It begins and ends with this exclamation “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” But there is a lot of discussion in the middle about what is and what is not valuable, and what evaluation is. And I tend to think that it is a story of a kind of moral development, where life teaches one the proper attitude to it. The vanity of the beginning is therefore not the vanity of the end. (By the way, the word “vanity” I the King James translation of the Hebrew HE-VEL, which can be also translated “nonsense.”) Anyway, perhaps this can be an example for what a discussion at this level could be like.

In the next part I say some things about how a moral attitude can show in someone’s life

Reply

reshef

6/13/2012 08:25:35 am

Part III

There is another issue you raise, about which I have less to say, about the way that a moral attitude may show in someone’s life. I think the reason you ask about this is to show me I have a problem: If I am right, then it almost seem as if there is no way for such an attitude to show in a person’s life. But I think I share your intuition (I think it is your intuition) that this must be wrong, and that there has to be some way or ways in which such an attitude shows. So I need to say something here.

Now, If I’m right, then such an ethical attitude as I have been talking about is not about how things in life are conceptualized. But this is not to say that the attitude does not come out in how things are conceptualized. It only means that there is no necessary connection between the way one conceptualizes things and the attitude one has to life as a whole. I certainly need to give it more thought, but my sense is that one’s attitude can surely influence, and that it normally does influence, the way that one conceptualizes things, and that this is one of the ways in which one’s attitude to life shows in life. So, for instance, the Amish forgiveness case that you mention in your paper seems to me, if the Amish were genuine, revelatory of a kind of happiness, which shows in the way they see, conceive, the murderer: as a lost soul rather than a criminal. Even if not completely genuine, it is at least an attempt to endorse a happy attitude, an almost godly acceptance of the contingencies of life.

But nevertheless, if I’m right, and there really is no necessary connection between the way one conceptualizes things and the attitude one has to life as a whole, then it should be possible to imagine two people who take two different ethical attitudes and yet conceptualize in the same way. I think this is possible. So, for instance, both the happy and the unhappy may recognize a certain act of self-sacrifice as such, but nevertheless adopt different attitudes towards it (that is, they will NOT argue about whether it was an act of altruism, or just another case of egoism in disguise). The happy may take it as miraculous and as revelatory of the true essence of human action, while the unhappy may take it as revealing how even in such feats of greatness, humanity is revealed to be hollow and colorless.

Granted, it may still be said that different conceptualizations are involved even here. But what is conceptualized here is not the act. If anything, it is life as a whole. And the kind of conceptualization of life as a whole here is nonsensical. So I’m reluctant to call it a case of conceptualization. Talking about the true essence of human action quite outside any attempt to formulate a theory of action, or saying of life that it is colorless are not even meant to involve a use the concept as they would normally be used. They are deliberate violations of the grammar of the words involves. It seems that the only way, in such cases, to conceptualize life is to abuse language.

If what I say is right, then it should also be possible for an ethical attitude to show in other places in life, in addition to the way in which one conceptualizes. And this seems to me true as well. So, for instance, there is a kind of ethical attitude that may be involved in the willingness to be inspired by others, and similarly there is a kind of attitude to life that may come out in one’s willingness to change, or to accept criticism. And one’s attitude to life may show in many other places: in one’s sense of humor, taste in music, in the metaphors one uses, in the way one talks to one’s pets, in the way one wakes up in the morning, in the way one looks at people on the street, or at a tree. Some of those things are more and some are less connected to conceptualization. And in any case, as far as I see, I don’t think that my way of understanding the nonsensicality of ethics on the second kind of view gets me into trouble.